With over 5.5 million confirmed cases and counting, US President Donald Trump is probably looking for every attempt to deflect attention from his administration’s handling of the pandemic.
But he picked the wrong target in New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Trump had pointed the finger at our Kiwi cousins on the campaign trail in Minnesota.
“The places they were using to hold up, they are having a big surge, and I don’t want that, I don’t want that,” said the US President.
“But they were holding up names of countries, and now they are saying ‘whoops’.”
“Even New Zealand, you see what is going on in New Zealand. ‘They beat it, they beat it.’ It was like front page (news), ‘they beat it’, because they wanted to show me something. The problem is… big surge in New Zealand. It’s terrible. We don’t want that.”
But Ms Ardern was quick to hit back.
“Obviously I don’t think there’s any comparison between New Zealand’s current cluster and the tens of thousands of cases that are being seen daily in the United States,” she said this week.
“Obviously, every country is experiencing its own fight with COVID-19; it is a tricky virus, but not one where I would compare New Zealand’s current status to the United States,” Ardern added.
“I think anyone who’s following COVID and its transmission globally will quite easily see that New Zealand’s nine cases in a day does not compare to the United States’ tens of thousands, and in fact does not compare to most countries in the world.”
With less than 2,000 confirmed cases (even with the current outbreak) it’s hard to disagree with her, no matter what the President would have you think.
